Interactive entertainment such as video games often depict game characters in a virtual world, where the game characters are performing some generally pre-defined tasks, typically under the direction of the person who is playing the game. In the context of a sports game, such as Madden™, published by Electronic Arts Inc., the person playing the game directs a football team and competes by running various football plays against his opponent. The opponent can be another person or the artificial intelligence of the game.
In sports broadcasting, it is desirable to comment on replays of selected events in a game, for example, a specific running play or the execution of a touchdown in football. Typically, this is accomplished by broadcasting a previously recorded video of the play and adding audio from a commentator who describes what is happening in the replay, which the viewer sees on his display.
As part of the commentary, additional indicators such as arrows may be added to the video to show particular directions of players and play movements that are involved in the replay. Such indicators may also be used to show hypothetical situations, for example, if a different result would have occurred had a particular player moved along a different, hypothetical route. If the hypothetical scenario is sufficiently complicated and involves many players, however, then such indicators may simply confuse the viewer further.
For complicated hypothetical scenarios, a sports broadcaster might be able to show the scenario using archived video footage of players executing the particular scenario, but since the number of different game play combinations is very high, it is inconvenient to search for and retrieve such material. Another option would be to get teams of players together for the purpose of executing the hypothetical scenario on a real field and to record the action, however, this is also inconvenient and generally not available in real time.
Video games provide the ability to create multiple scenarios very easily because the game may be played over and over again, each time with a new scenario in mind. The content of a particular scenario generally depends in part on how the user plays the game and in part how the artificial intelligence of the game reacts to the user's game play. These in-game scenarios can be recorded by the game camera. However, there are challenges with using the game camera for this purpose. Generally, the game cameras are designed to provide the game player with a field of view that is appropriate for the game genre (sports, adventure, shooter, racing, etc.) and the presentation style (first person, third person detached, cinematic, etc.). This field of view may not be the same view that is desired for viewing the hypothetical scenarios described above. For example, the game camera in a sports game may follow a particular character (the character that is being played by the user), and only show that portion of the field, basketball court, etc. to the exclusion of events, which may be happening outside of that field of view. Game cameras can be difficult and time-consuming to design because the designer needs to take into account the design of the game world and how the player character moves within that world in order to prevent undesirable effects that will cause a user to become distracted or disoriented. Designers are reluctant to make changes to software code associated with game cameras because breaking this code can be disastrous for a game and the game team's production schedule.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide a means for editing cameras in real time and to provide real time playback to combine three dimensional video game graphics with broadcast images to produce interactive “replays” of game scenarios.